


Especially History

by bgharison



Series: Tenacious Men [5]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Canonical Character Death, Danny Worries, Episode tag 4.01, Episode tag 5.07, Gen, steve is Not Okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bgharison/pseuds/bgharison
Summary: “Danny, I’m fine, really, I --”“Fine.  Fine?  Fine, he says.  You don’t know from fine, Steve. Ten days.  Ten days ago, Steve, you -- you know what, I’m not gonna do this in the driveway.  Come on.  Get in the house.”“S’my house,” Steve muttered, but he followed Danny up the sidewalk and onto the porch anyway.  He could hear the DNA test print-out crinkling in his pocket.





	Especially History

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aries_taurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aries_taurus/gifts).



> Series of (mostly) unrelated one-shots based on the Philip Roth quote in the New York Times interview; this one from this bit:
> 
> ". . . the rude touch of the terrible surprise — unshrinking men stunned by the life one is defenseless against, including especially history: the unforeseen that is constantly recurring as the current moment."
> 
> and written for aries_taurus who gave me a lovely, angsty prompt (see end notes)

Danny looked frantic, often enough.  He knew this, he knew that his body language, the frenetic energy that emanated off him on a random day, the tendency of his face to pink up under the slightest stress, the god-forsaken disaster that ensued if he gave in to the impulse to run his hands through his hair -- yeah, he knew that he looked frantic often enough.

The truth was, though, it was unusual for him to be genuinely frantic.  The day his partner was shot. The day Gracie was kidnapped. The day Jenna called and said that Steve was with her in North Fucking Korea with Wo Fucking Fat.  The day he found the Marquis empty, found blood, tracked Steve and found him, on the floor, water dripping, blood dripping, still, silent --

Yeah.  That day.  That day ten days ago.

And then, too soon, much too soon after -- today.

“We’ll find him, Danny,” Chin said.

Danny took a shaky breath.  “Well, I was a lot more confident of that seven hours ago, before all of HPD and even the park rangers turned up nothing.”

“Maybe Kono will find something at one of the breaks.”

“He shouldn’t be surfing.  Hell, he shouldn’t be out of the hospital.  He’s still got God-knows-what in his system -- Grover, anything?”

Grover shook his head as he walked up to Danny and Chin, bent over the smart table, looking at -- nothing.  There was nothing to look at.

“I checked every hospital, every clinic . . . nothing.  I’m sorry, man.”

Danny’s hands white-knuckled the table, his head hanging down in defeat.

“So, he’s not injured,” Chin offered hopefully.

“No.  He’s not at a hospital,” Danny snapped.  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. It’s just -- I’d have rather found him at a hospital, bleeding from trying to pull some stupid shit, rather than just --”

Chin’s phone rang out and he grabbed at it.

“Kono?  Anything?”  

He was silent a moment.

“Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker.”  

Kono sounded exhausted.  She’d been canvassing every break on the island, on the off chance that Steve had decided to seek out a stronger surf than the calm waters behind his house offered.  

“Couple guys thought they saw a Marquis early this afternoon, said a guy who looked military got out, went to Mamo’s surf stand.  Mamo wasn’t working today . . . said the guy got back in the Marquis and drove toward the closed down pier.”

“They recognize Steve’s photo at all?” Chin asked.

“Nah, brah, they’d worked their way through most of their cooler,” she said.  “Said they thought the guy was wearing a ball cap and shades, but his bearing looked like a local military.  I’ll go to the pier, check it out.”

“No,” Danny said quickly.  “Kono, if Steve’s . . . if he’s not himself . . .”

“You think I can’t take him?”

“Kono, all of us together couldn’t take him,” Danny said.  “I’m on my way, meet me at Mamo’s and point me to the pier.”

Danny trudged toward the door, not looking back, not waiting to give Chin or Grover a chance to argue with him.  As the elevator doors closed, though, he called out to Chin.

“And get the tech guys to work up a way to low-jack that damn Marquis.  I’ll do it behind Steve’s back if I have to. I’m not spending another day like this.”

The doors closed with a whoosh before they could respond.

 

****

 

“You want me to go with, Danny?” Kono asked.  She rubbed at her eyes, exhausted but determined.

“No, lemme handle it,” Danny said.

“Well, you’re the Steve-whisperer.”  She grinned at him, a flash of dimples and white teeth in the gently fading light.  “So, about a mile past the ‘no entry’ sign. There used to be public parking. It’s overgrown now, but enough people still sneak out that . . . well.  If you don’t find him, there’s space enough still to turn around. Want me to wait here?”

Danny thought for a moment.  If Steve was there, and hurt . . . he might need a hand.

“Yeah, in case the big idiot’s gotten himself dehydrated or infected,” Danny sighed.  “I’ll call you when I find out whether or not he’s holed up there.”

 

****

 

Danny sighed in relief when he saw the Marquis, until images of the empty driver’s seat, and a puddle of Steve’s blood filled his mind.  He held his breath as he got out of the Camaro, slowly, his gun unholstered, safety off. He made his way to the car, cleared it. No sign of Steve.

He approached the pier cautiously, muttering.

“So help me, Steven, if you’ve fallen through a rotted board, I’m gonna . . .”

Finally -- finally -- he caught a glimpse of long legs, crossed at the ankle, the rest of the body hidden from view, but apparently leaning up against the ancient pier house.  He climbed the stairs cautiously.

“Steve?” he called out, as he reached the top.

“Wha -- g’way, Dn’y.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.  You hurt?”

Silence.  He rounded the corner, looked down.  Steve was sprawled against the wall but seemed relatively intact.  Danny could smell whiskey. He sighed and pulled out his phone.

“I’ve got him.  Let Chin and Grover know.  Have them tell -- hell, I don’t know.  Let Chin figure it out. Thanks, Kono. Yeah.”

He was tired, suddenly, so, so tired.  Thumbing the safety back on his gun and holstering it, he let himself slide down next to Steve.

“Scared the fucking shit out of me, Steve, don’t you ever pull that fucking stunt again, do you hear me?  I know you’ve been through hell and back, but damn it, we had almost eight hours with no word from you, do you know -- do you  _ know, _ Steve -- what we were thinking, what --”

“Lef’ you a note,” Steve said mulishly.

“A -- no.  No, you did not leave me a note, that was the first thing I looked for,” Danny said.

“I lef’ -- oh.  Shit.”

“Shit?”

“On the seat a’my car.  The -- the Marquis.”

“Which you drove.  To an abandoned pier.  Without your phone, I might add.”

“Phone’s . . . in my truck.”

“Yeah, yeah, we found those when we went to your house this morning,” Danny said.  “That’s how we knew to have a BOLO on the Marquis, how Kono knew to ask every damn surfer at every damn break on the island if they’d seen it.”

“M’sorry, Danno,” Steve said.  He turned red-rimmed, remorseful eyes to Danny.  “Did’n mean to upset you.”

Danny sighed.  He was no match for those soft, sad eyes.  Never had been, never would be.

“You can’t do this, Steve, not when you’ve been taken, tortured . . . still not healed . . . you need time, space, you got it -- but you got to tell us, okay, babe?”

Steve nodded.  He picked up the mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels and offered it to Danny.   
“No, thanks.  You wanna tell me why you trespassed, risked injury, and got a jump start on liver damage?”

“Mamo used to bring me and Mare here when we were kids,” Steve said.  He stared out at the water, the first tinges of orange and magenta sunset sparkling off the surface.  “Taught us to fish.”

“That’s nice,” Danny said.  “Nice memory. That why you were looking for Mamo today?”

Steve looked at him sharply and Danny couldn’t help but laugh, in spite of the churning in his gut over Steve -- Steve, the SEAL, the Commander, the control freak -- letting himself become this vulnerable, this compromised -- this drunk.

“Babe.  Five-O. Detective.  SWAT Captain. Lieutenant.  And Kono. Who, by the way -- should probably have a promotion by now, but I’ll remind you of that when you’re sober.  Yeah, we know you went looking for Mamo.”

“Wanted to . . . talk to him,” Steve mumbled.  He hesitated, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.  “Show’im this.” He thrust the paper at Danny and took a swig out of the bottle, frowning when it didn’t yield more than a small swallow.  He put it down next to his backpack with exaggerated care.

Danny smoothed the paper on his lap.  “What am I looking at here, Steve?”

“DNA tes’ results.”

Danny felt Steve stiffen his spine, his shoulders going rigid somehow, even in his impossible slouch against the pierhouse wall.  The paper was upside down, still, but Danny felt a chill creep into his chest, a hollow in the pit of his stomach. He turned the paper the right way.  Steve sat preternaturally still beside him, waiting.

No.   _ No, it wasn’t possible _ .  What he was reading --  Steve’s name, WoFat’s name . . .

“He w’s m’brother, Danny.”

“No, Steve, that’s not --”  But Danny knew what he was looking at.  He’d looked at enough DNA samples, enough lab reports, enough matches, to know exactly what he was seeing.  Unless --

“Someone could have falsified this, Steve, where --”

Steve shook his head, emphatically. “I had Max check.  Max did this. For me. No mistakes.”

Danny stared at the paper.  If Max had run it, at Steve’s request, the likelihood of error, between two of the most careful men he knew -- well.  There was little likelihood of error. Which meant the document in his hand was accurate.

Which mean that WoFat was Steve’s -- he looked at the paper again.

“Your half-brother,” he whispered.  “WoFat was -- when did you find out?”

“Back -- after my mom wen’ to visit him.  WoFat. I . . . couldn’t understand. Why -- why she wanted contact with him . . . why --”

“WoFat told you that she came to apologize for killing his father,” Danny said.  “She killed -- his father.”

“Who, apparently -- well, obviously -- she’d had -- you know.”  Steve made a vague, helpless gesture.

“Steve.”  Danny, for once, was speechless.  What could he say?  _ I’m sorry he was your brother.  I’m sorry your mother was . . . who she was.  I’m sorry everyone lied. I’m sorry you had to -- _

“Oh God, Steve, you -- he didn’t give you a choice, you know that, right?  He didn’t give you a choice.”

Steve slumped against the wall, a strangled sound forcing its way out of his throat.

“No one ever has, Danny.  No one’s ev’r given me a choice.  Not my mom, when she played dead, not my Dad, when he sen’ me away, not WoFat when he -- when ‘e --” Steve pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and pulled his knees up against his chest.

Danny put a hand on his back, between his shoulders, and Steve tried to shrug him off.

“Don’t, Danny. Wanted to be alone for a reason, okay?”

“Yeah, I get that.  But you’ve been alone for an entire day, while the rest of us went slowly out of our minds in panic, and . . . babe, I don’t think alone has worked out so well for you.”  

“Don’t.”

Danny didn’t listen, he didn’t think Steve’s insistence carried much conviction.  He didn’t move his hand, either, and Steve had stopped shrugging him off. He could feel the hitch in his breath, from the pain of breathing against the still-healing ribs, from the barely contained emotions.

“When did you find out?” Danny asked quietly.  “Just today?”

Steve shook his head.  “I -- I’ve known.”

“After -- after?”   _ Please, dear God,  _ Danny thought _ , please don’t tell me he knew, please don’t let him have known when WoFat had him, when he -- _

“No.  I’ve -- I’ve known for almost a year.  Mary doesn’t know. She can’t know, Danny, Mary can’t know.  Not now. Not yet. It’s not fair to her.” Steve, aided by his unfair metabolism and his mental fortitude, wasn’t even slurring now -- shocked back into sobriety, Danny thought, which, though necessary, was also a damn shame.

Danny didn’t reply, because what was the point, really?  There was absolutely nothing he could say that would make it better.  

“We’re gonna watch this sunset,” he said, instead.  “And then, we’re gonna go back to your place, get you cleaned up, get some real food in you.”

Steve chuffed out a mocking laugh.  “That’s going to fix things, then.”

“No, it’s not going to fix things. But it’s what we’re going to do, because I, for one, am concerned -- very concerned, Steven -- about getting splinters in my ass.  This is a condemned pier. Condemned. Tetanus. Tetanus is a legitimate concern, here.”

“I can give you a tetanus shot,” Steve offered.

Danny gaped at him in amazement.  Even half out of his mind, drunk on whiskey and grief,  Steve was . . . so very Steve.

“No, thank you.”  He reached down his hand to haul up six feet of unsteady and wounded SEAL.  Not for the first time, and, he was certain, not for the last, he wondered how this was his life.

 

*****

 

So, the drinking was a bad idea, Steve realized, as he rode in the passenger seat of the Camaro.  A really, colossally bad idea.

Although, if Danny had just left him the hell alone, like he’d wanted to be, he would have slept it off on the pier.  He had a blanket with him and everything. But Danny being so very Danny -- being such a damn good detective, for starters -- of course he wasn’t sleeping it off on the pier, he was riding shotgun, in the Camaro, a fifth of whiskey and not much else sloshing in his stomach.  Sloshing.

Sloshing.

“Pull over.”  The words were barely out of his mouth before Danny had eased the car off the road, and Steve wrenched the door open, leaning out, and hurling the contents of his stomach onto the ground.  God, it burned. He wretched and heaved, long after his stomach was empty. He was aware of Danny’s hand on his back, rubbing gently. After a few moments, a water bottle was pressed into his hand.  The cap had been loosened. He swished the first few mouthfuls around and spat them out, then let a few cautious sips down his raw, burning throat. It helped.

“You good now?”  Danny’s voice was soft. No judgment. 

Steve nodded miserably and folded himself back into the car, closing his eyes and leaning against the headrest.  He felt himself drifting a bit, a little numb, which was the whole point of the whiskey. Of course now that he’d puked a good portion of it back up . . . 

He sighed as they pulled into his driveway.  Maybe Danny would leave him in peace.

But Danny was coming around the back of the car and . . . pulling his go-back out of the trunk.  Well. Shit. He wasn’t going to be left in peace, then.

“Danny, I’m fine, really, I --”

“Fine.  Fine? Fine, he says.  You don’t know from fine, Steve. Ten days.  Ten days ago, Steve, you -- you know what, I’m not gonna do this in the driveway.  Come on. Get in the house.”

“S’my house,” Steve muttered, but he followed Danny up the sidewalk and onto the porch anyway.  He could hear the DNA test print-out crinkling in his pocket.

“Shower.  You reek,” Danny said, not unkindly, pointing to the stairs.  “I’m making you soup.”

Steve headed to the stairs, too exhausted to argue.  He hadn’t slept, really, not in ten days, not since --

“Not tomato,” he said, pausing on the first step. His mom always made him tomato, and tonight he just -- he couldn’t.

“Okay, no tomato,” Danny said.  He didn’t break his stride on the way to the kitchen.  “Too much acid.”

Steve stripped and stepped into the shower.  He turned his face into the spray, and panicked.  He’d forgotten -- well, more accurately, he’d dulled the memory of panicking every time, every damn time, that he stepped into the shower and the spray on his face morphed into water from the bucket, turned into WoFat’s face, WoFat calling him  _ brother _ . . .   

He dry heaved, but it pulled him out of his head, out of his panic, back to the present.  He scrubbed up, quickly, keeping his face free of the spray, using his hands to soap and rinse his face instead.  The burns from the cattle prod smarted under the soap and water. He dressed in soft track pants and an even softer t-shirt, hissing, still, as he pulled everything on over his abused body.  The back of his neck ached. His ribs ached.

His  _ soul _ ached, he thought.  And as it turns out, getting shit-faced didn’t really help, not that much.

There was a bowl of soup waiting for him at the small kitchen table.  He eased himself gingerly onto a stool and ate a few bites, Danny watching him silently, his hip propped against the counter.  He hadn’t even realized he was hungry, but the soup disappeared in moments. It eased the aching, empty spot in his gut.

Danny laughed softly, as if reading his mind.

“Sometimes, food helps,” he said.  “Metaphorically and literally. Wanna sit outside?”

Steve nodded and followed Danny out the back door.  The sun was almost completely set now, casting its last dark purple light over the backyard.  A few of the solar path lights were blinking on. Steve didn’t need light. He could picture Danny’s face well enough without it.  Concern. Anger, but not at him.

“I’m so sorry,” Danny said, finally, “that you carried this for all this time, alone.  And I’m not talking about the last ten days. I’m talking about the last year. That you had this -- this unbearable secret, and you thought you had to carry that alone.”

“It’s my problem, Danny.  It’s my screwed up family.”

“And what are we, hunh?  Where’s all the lecture about ohana now?  You think you don’t got family that would have helped you with this?”

“How, Danny?  How would telling you have helped?”

“I don’t know!”  Danny was gesturing now.  “I don’t know, Steve, but how did not telling us, how did that help?  Hunh? Tell me that? How did that help? Did it make it better, easier somehow, that no one else knew?”

“Yes!”  Steve was shocked at his own shout, but once he started, he couldn’t put on the brakes.  “Yes, it made it better, easier. Would you have wanted Gracie to be around -- around someone who was -- blood related, Danny -- blood related to that?  To WoFat?”

“What does -- okay, wow, that is a stretch, even for your self-flagellating logic.  I don’t give a flying fuck about DNA when it comes to knowing what kind of man you are.  You are nothing like him, you got that? Nothing.”

“I -- I killed him, Danny.”  Steve wanted to argue with Danny, wanted to shout back, tell him that he was wrong, he had to be, because what kind of man killed his own brother?

“Yeah.  Yeah, I know, and I’m so sorry,” Danny said.  “Not because he’s dead. But because he forced your hand.  He tortured you, Steve. Tortured you, and drugged you, and . . .”

“The videos,” Steve said.

“Come again?”

“The videos.  The worst was . . . the home videos, I don’t know how he --”

“Oh, God, your family movies, you said . . . he had family movies . . .”

“Me.  Mary. My dad and . . . mom.  I -- he drugged me, and that room -- that white room?  And all I could think was, all that time, that whole time, while she was raising me and Mary, she -- she -- was thinking of him, missing him, wondering about him.  She abandoned him, Danny.” His voice broke. “Damn it.” He leaned forward, cradling his aching head in his hands. 

“Go ahead, babe, say whatever you feel needs saying.”  Danny’s hand was between his shoulder blades again, warm, strong.

“She abandoned him, and then she abandoned me and Mary, and fuck it, Danny, if that doesn’t make us brothers I don’t know what does.  The DNA, that’s just an added cruelty, because it means she lied. She lied, the whole time, lied to everyone. And he -- I think he knew.  I’m pretty sure he knew, that we were brothers. He said it, I think he knew.”

“I’m so sorry, Steve,” Danny murmured.  Steve was thankful, so incredibly thankful, that Danny wasn’t trying to fix this because there was nothing, nothing he could say that would change the fact that --

“I killed my brother, Danny.”  He tried to hold back the wave of emotion, but it was no use.  A year of the crushing burden of the truth, and then ten days, ten days of pain and sleepless night, and the lifeless eyes of WoFat, of his brother, looking back at him, was too much.  He felt it, as powerful as any breaker on the North Shore, felt it crash over him.

He was pretty sure it was going to take him under, and like a rip tide, keep him under until he drowned in it, drowned in the grief and the anger, and the unbearable, unthinkable guilt.

 

******

 

Danny held on, the only way he knew how -- with his own two hands and his litany of words, most of them nonsense, lots of them  _ I’m sorry,  _ and _ it’s not your fault,  _ and _ go ahead, babe, let it out,  _ and mostly _ it’s okay.   _ Even though it wasn’t, it wasn’t okay, not by anyone’s standards.

And even for Steve, this was fucked up.

Danny let the words flow out, anyway, because between that and his firm grip on Steve’s shoulders, it seemed to help, at least a little, if the way Steve had given in and collapsed against him was any indication.  He felt Steve’s breath coming easier, in deep gasps instead of choking gulps. He tried to pull his own thoughts together, tried to gather his wits so that he could respond to Steve with something coherent, something useful.

“What if he had a kid, Danny?  Did I orphan WoFat’s kid, the way Doris orphaned him?”

Well.   _ Shit _ .  Okay, he had nothing coherent or useful for that.  And Steve had pulled away, was looking at him with those huge hazel eyes, his eyelashes damp.

“I don’t know, Steve,” he admitted.  He felt gutted, could only imagine how Steve must feel.

“I don’t know, either,” Steve said, barely above a whisper.  But honesty seemed to have been the best policy, because Steve looked marginally less devastated.  Platitudes would have fallen empty onto the sand, anyway.

“Do you -- want to find out?” Danny asked cautiously.  What a clusterfuck  _ that _ would be.  It would probably involve Catherine.  Joe. Hell, maybe even Doris herself. But if it was what Steve wanted --

“No,” Steve said slowly.  “I don’t think -- I don’t think knowing me, having any connection to me or my family, would be in their best interest.  I -- I would, Danny, you know I would, I would want to help, to make sure they were provided for but -- I think, probably, it would bring them more harm than good.”

“Sounds right, and . . . sounds like you’ve thought about it.”

Steve nodded, wiped his hand across his face. “Yeah.  Pretty much all I’ve thought about the last ten days. I . . . I don’t know what to do, Danny, I can’t get past it.  Usually, I would, you know . . . “

“Bend the rules, call in some favors, find the answers you need?”

“Yeah.  But I can’t do that.  Not this time. It’s . . . it all got to be too much, you know?”  Steve swiped his hand across his face again.

“I honestly can just barely imagine.  I do know it’s too much, way too much, for one person.  You gotta let us in Steve, let us help you.”

“My family --”

“We are also your family, if ohana is all it’s cracked up to be,” Danny pointed out.  

Steve nodded and took in a breath, let it out in a shuddering exhale.  Danny leaned forward, caught Steve’s eye in the dim light.

“I have -- if I may -- an idea?  Maybe?”

“Anything, Danny.”

“Tomorrow, lemma call my Ma.  I won’t give details, I swear.  But . . . well, if anyone knows if there’s . . . a prayer, maybe?  Something we could -- I dunno. Light a candle, for . . . you know, for a child?  Unless you hate the idea. I know you’re not a religious --”

“No, I -- I mean, yes.  Yeah. That . . . that would be good, Danny.  Thanks.”

“Anything, Steve.”  Danny echoed the sentiment back to him.  “Anything that doesn’t involve you crawling into the bottom of a bottle, and scaring the shit out of us.”

“I’m sorry, Danny.”

“Look, I get it.  I’ve been there, remember?  It’s -- you think it’s going to help, because nothing else helps, but . . . anyway.  I know you know. I’m not here to lecture.”

“Really?”  Steve was smirking, now, and by God, if it wasn’t the best sight Danny had seen all day, even if the smirk was forced, and accompanied by sunken cheeks and black circles under his eyes.

“You think you can get some sleep?” 

Steve sighed, half shook his head, and made an aborted gesture with his hand.

“Tell you what, let me grab a shower, why don’t you tackle another bowl of soup.  Then we’ll . . . turn on a game, or something.”

“Not an infomercial?  You sure?”

Danny let himself fall back into a parody of their usual banter as they made their way -- slowly, painfully, on Steve’s part -- back to the house.  It was a little stilted, a little awkward -- but it was a start, a step back toward the light.

 

*****

 

Steve insisted that the reclining chair and ottoman was easier on his ribs -- and it was -- and Danny didn’t call him on it, didn’t bat an eye, just fetched a pillow and light blanket for each of them.  Steve accepted the proffered pain relievers and muscle relaxants, ignoring Danny’s pointed glare at the almost untouched quantity still in the bottles. He’d drifted off at some point, apparently, during some long-past baseball game that Danny had scrounged from the bottom of the DVR list.

The flickering light sent him into panic for a moment, chasing images of a home movie featuring his dad, his sister, and a little boy that looked remarkably like WoFat.  His hand went to his hip and he felt nothing there but the sting of burned skin, until his brain came online and resumed processing -- the flickering light was from an episode of “Blue Planet”, which, bless him, Danny had left running.  He could hear Danny’s soft, snuffling snores from the couch, and then Danny.

“You’kay?”

Steve reached for one of the water bottles that had been placed carefully next to his chair.  He look a long sip as his pulse and respiration returned to normal. He closed his eyes, took stock.

“No.  No, I’m not, really.  I think . . . I think my choices today demonstrated that.”

Danny sat up, mostly awake, but said nothing, just waited for Steve to continue.

“I think I’m going to have a hard time with this for a while, Danny.”  The admission was out of his mouth almost before he’d processed it, and it shocked him, a little.  He looked at Danny, wanting to gauge his reaction. But Danny didn’t look shocked. 

“Well.  Good thing I’m not planning on going anywhere, then,” he said.  He half-grinned at Steve, his hair standing up in a shocking display, his tired eyes full of so much patience and affection that Steve felt a sudden rush of thankful tears.

“I’m really fucking tired, Danny,” he whispered.  

“Of course you are.  You have every right and reason to be.  You think you can sleep a little more?”

Steve closed his eyes, took stock of that, too, and realized that with Danny there, with the huge burden of knowledge and guilt lifted, just a little . . . 

 

*****

 

Danny watched as Steve’s eyes slid closed and he drifted back off, clearly mid-thought.  He let out a sigh of relief. Steve needed sleep -- lots of it -- and if that was the only thing Danny could give him at the moment, it was at least a start.  He did a quick mental check of time zones and then shrugged and pulled out his phone, anyway, his thumbs fumbling in the dark.

 

_ ::DW::  Hey, Ma?  When you get up, gimme a call plz.  Need some advice. _

  
  


*****

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt: "Steve doesn't show up for work one day. Danny finds him, after an entire *day* of searching, somewhere on the island, nowhere they've been before, alone, with a bottle of something, mostly gone, drunk and crying."


End file.
